Google Updates and SERP Changes - April 2019

[dollarsound]

The following 2 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4937425.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 11:52 pm on Apr 1, 2019 (PDT -8)



Today traffic is 35% up. This site wasn't affected by these previous updates in march, in august had an increase in organic traffic also, and since then has been fluctuating

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 7:58 am (utc) on Apr 2, 2019]
[edit reason] Cleanup after thread split to new month [/edit]

[ichthyous]

Traffic has been low since March 12th really, with a few spikes but always returning to the lower level. 4/8 to 4/11 very low. This is really hurting my business. I've got two full time jobs now trying to recover from Google and diversifying away as quickly as possible to other non search platforms...i.e. paid. I always said I woukd be glad to push some money google's way, but adwords don't work for my business and reaching customers via the display network on the sites I would need to show up on is out of reach... Only large Corp clients can afford that.

[Milchan]

Google new better how to rank posts before August 2018. They were more relevant.

I agree. Regardless of my own feelings and experience in relation to my business, on a personal level as a search user I find it much harder to find what I am actually looking for now with google as the results are often not relevant to my query.

[Shepherd]

but adwords don't work for my business

Not trying to be snarky or mean, sincere question here: If adwords does not work for your business, what qualifies it to be included in the organic search results?

[Milchan]

Not trying to be snarky or mean, sincere question here: If adwords does not work for your business, what qualifies it to be included in the organic search results?

I dont understand this question to be honest.
Adwords do not work for my business either , ive tried , people simply do not click on them enough and convert in order to justify the cost of them - people tend to click on the serp results for my keywords than they do for the ads and I think in general people have less trust in advertised sites in my niche than they would the top results.

[swright]

Not trying to be snarky or mean, sincere question here: If adwords does not work for your business, what qualifies it to be included in the organic search results?

Adwords doesn't work for many information publications that make money from affiliate marketing or advertising. The merchant that sells the product and gives you a cut from its profit in the form of commission or ad fees will always have more room to bid for the same KW than you do.

[Leandro]

I think Disavow isn't working since March 12 and that's why lots of sites lost rankings and no matter what you do, you won't will fix that while disavow lists isn't being considered.

[stewart williams]

I have noticed that with past few algorithms, Old sites were given importance despite they are not worth in terms of content or the quality, I can simply call it as "messed up SERPS" Google really don't show true content when they claim great content is what they need?

[RedBar]

Just like last month I am having to log-in to read this thread ... WHY?

[EditorialGuy]

Not trying to be snarky or mean, sincere question here: If adwords does not work for your business, what qualifies it to be included in the organic search results?

What swright said. In any case, what does AdWords have to do with organic search results? AdWords and organic results are two entirely different things, like ads and editorial content in newspapers and magazines.

[Selen]

Ads in magazines are paid in advance.

[ichthyous]

What swright said. In any case, what does AdWords have to do with organic search results? AdWords and organic results are two entirely different things, like ads and editorial content in newspapers and magazines.

Google is continually squeezing all of us because it wants us to pay them. If your site is dropping out of organic placement then an alternative is placing ads through adwords and paying for them is it not? I'm not talking about earning revenue from adwords, I'm talking about running adwords for my business.

With regards to the previous question...the great majority of people searching through Google for what I sell are looking for a low price point. Perhaps 1/10 is a qualified buyer. I am selling high value items and it makes no sense for me to pay Google for adwords when 90%+ of the people clicking on the ads have much lower price expectations. With organic SERPs there is no cost to me so I don't really care how many click through. It's like panning for gold and you have to field a lot of inquiries before one buys. This is not the situation for most of you on here. I am trying other platforms to reach the higher end buyers now, but it's still hard to get good placement and very expensive to be there with very little return thus far. Still, I feel there is no choice but to get away from depending on Google so heavily, and that means spending money one way or another.

[shadowlight]

My site is all over the place. Ive stopped checking so much as it was starting to really stress me out. It bounces around constantly. Its been on page one of results for years and was actually #1 for several years. Its still on page one for the most part but the position is constantly changing and i mean I do a search for the keyword, two seconds later I do the search and its in a different position.

At one point my site dissapeared from serps altogether, this didnt last long before it came back. It actually went to page two for a while (couple of hours) then back to page one. Ive never seen so much volatility in the serps in my life.

Some pages were actually showing they werent cached but were still in the serps.

When I inspect pages in GSC, every single page that is indexed all state 'submitted, not submitted in site map' despite the fact that they are actually submitted in a sitemap and have been for years with GSC showing the sitemap data in the sitemap tab of GSC.

Its all one big mess and it seems no matter what I do regarding content and technical aspects it doesent seem to make much difference. I personally think most of their attention and efforts have been on maximising their profits via ads hence why their profits have shot through the roof.

They really need to start practicing what they preach because without satisfied users and content creators, google the search engine wouldnt even exist.

[Shepherd]

the great majority of people searching through Google for what I sell are looking for a low price point.

So if your business is not selling products at a low price point it could be inferred that your business's website is sending signals to google that the majority of searchers would not be interested in your website. That pile of tailings you create while panning for gold is valuable traffic for google. For ecom sites (not talking about affiliates, newspapers, or lemon-aid stands) a good litmus test is being able to compete in adwords. If one's business model is such that it struggles to compete in adwords it is likely that it is sending signals that will make it struggle in organic search. A Bentley is a wonderful "family car" but it is unlikely that we will ever see an adwords ad or a prominent organic listing for Bentley in a search for "family car".

[broccoli]

Has anyone else noticed a big change since the weekend? I seem to have gained back the traffic I lost during the core update even though my home page still isn’t ranking where it was (it has gained further since the deindexing mess at the weekend though). Really confusing and I guess still too early to tell what’s going on.

@ichthyous I’m wondering whether I should put a big branded logo with my domain name across the middle of all of the images Google is using on other people’s snippets. See if it gets me some direct traffic. :D

[JesterMagic]

@broccoli Yes we have noticed a change this pass week. Seems like a small update happened.

During the "pages dropping from the index" issue my sites traffic actually increased about 7% even though we experienced pages being dropped from the index as well. After the "fix" instead of going back to normal (at least normal for the last few weeks) our traffic dropped further (again) and we lost about 3-4% traffic.

Glad your site went up. Our traffic ups and downs seem to mirror yours somewhat (based on your previous posts), I wonder why not this time...

I also have notice that since the index issue Google bot has been visiting my site at least 2x more than normal.

[teeggeelen]

We'v lost 70% of the visitors (google/ Netherlands)

[RedBar]

I’m wondering whether I should put a big branded logo with my domain name across the middle of all of the images Google is using on other people’s snippets.

Most, not all I have to add, images with watermarks have been filtered out by Google for several years now. If you have a totally exclusive image of a widget and there is not one anywhere on The Net, then you might be ok.

It would be an interesting experiment to know how long G took to remove them or if they do actually leave them as-is.

[RedBar]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld teeggeelen

We'v lost 70% of the visitors (google/ Netherlands)

You are not alone, I have seen reports of up to 90%!

My worst is 50% a 21 year old site.
Average 30% between 10-25 years old.
I have one with 0%, it is 18 months old.

I am not sure what that tells me!

[BangkokBaby]

Google search for the most part has never been better IMO.

I have started using DuckDuckGo for personal reasons as they don't store info but a few times per day I have to end up going to Google because their #1 listing are better and they have a updated "news" section.

We are coming into a new era of SEO where it's no longer good enough to do it as a part-time hobby, because there are people who are literally spending all day on their sites so they can get to $xxx per month. I neglected a few sites because I was ranking well and last year I was crushed. Now I have to work much harder than before.

Don't blame Google, if it did not exist we would not have been given the chance to make money. If it doesn't keep updating it will become like AOL or Lycos, dead.

Read and act on the data in your GA and GSC, don't let emotions get involved as that's when you blame Google and don't look at the weaker area of your sites.

[teeggeelen]

@RedBar: Interesting. Another website of ours, 6 months old, has lost no visitors. Why do young websites do better?

[RedBar]

Google search for the most part has never been better IMO.

Which version of Google search are you using?

For my global widgets the results have never been so bad and what is worse they are even more USA biased now than ever.

DDG has been my go to search for quite some time, then Bing and if I really have to G.

[Cralamarre]

Why do young websites do better?

Young sites do not automatically do better. Older sites are more likely to be seen as trusted authority sites. My site is nearly 14 years old and doing fine, while newer competitors over the years have come and gone.
But one reason why a newer site may outrank an older site is if the content on the older site is as old as the site itself, not having been updated or refreshed in years. Newer sites with more up to date content would have an advantage.

[stewart williams]

Did anyone has strange behavior of rankings moving back and froth since march update? this is really terrible, when after moved back and came to normal, in the mean time of being felt happy, it again going to backwards.

[pupidu]

google will blow - no, its not rant. their indexing is slower and among other things is expensive infrastructure. they cant handle index. we all saw collapse many times happening to many sites since 90es. google is collapsing and telling us that it is our fault. every day is new google update - no clue and vision.

look at alternative search engines. who does not use them? when I see 3 pages of results for a such average query on goog then why should I use it? it is no romantic moment. i want answers to my questions, not sites with strong backlink profiles on 2 pages and then nothing else there.

concentrate on yandex and bing serps. it is obvious that duckduck and bing will be only stronger in a future. completely different visitors profiles and bounce rates.

[ichthyous]

Most, not all I have to add, images with watermarks have been filtered out by Google for several years now.

@RedBar Where did you hear this? My images contain a small but visible watermark usually on the upper right or lower left corner. Certainly doesn't seem like they've been removed. Look at all the stock agency images...all with big watermarks in the center

[samwest]

I have not been around lately, but just had to come by to see what the heck is going on? Things were chuggin along fine for the past few months, no complaints, but suddenly traffic has stopped cold again. GA sits at zero almost all day yet SERPs do not appear to have moved either way. The traffic that does show up is all classic Zombie behavior. Still holding #1 and #2 an sometimes I am domain crowding the whole of page #1, yet NO TRAFFIC? I checked everything once, twice, thrice and more but all looks fine. G must need to make some quick profits again. SMH.

[universenet]

if your website lost trafic is because google make search wide to more websites.. including websites what has been before on bottom of search...
so this is why you can see many irelevant results
We can see many websites made "before Noah... before flood" on first page in google...
If anybody thinking diferent let feel free to say...but what I think is that google including in top search decent websites... even many of them are so slow for loading ... if you thinking same like me so question is?
Why google doing this?
Ok...of course some people will no agree with me

[samwest]

it's not a matter of not agreeing, it's simply not understanding what you are trying to say. :)

[universenet]

samwest + like I said.. I am thinking that google including in top search what are irelevant... not the best

[ichthyous]

@samwest Seeing the same thing here...holding pretty steady placement in SEMrush but traffic is about 30% down from early March.